The average new home size in America just set a record at about 2,600 square feet, but two Pella college students just finished a house 10 times smaller.Watch this storyCentral College seniors Amy Andrews and Ethan Van Kooten are quite proud of their tiny house they jokingly call the "little house on the prairie."“Well, it's 240 square feet. Just one room, built as a class project, but it's grown into the talk-of-the-town in Pella,” Van Kooten said.The goal of the project was to create a basic house, with a cheap price and most of the comforts of home. Since Van Kooten and Andrews are environmental science majors, that meant a lot of recycling.“It was so neat to pull things out that were landfill-bound. We literally pulled insulation out of a dumpster,” Andrews said.The house includes it all: cupboards, cabinets, windows and siding on the inside.Andrews said they even added windows that were donated.The 160-foot main floor is equipped with a small kitchen, fridge, wood stove, table and chairs. A king-sized mattress fills up the 80 square-foot loft. With no electricity, candles provide the light.The typical price tag for a tiny house is about $10,000. They were planning on spending $3,500 building their tiny home, but instead they spent $489 dollars.“Our goal is to prove that you can do it on a budget, and I think we definitely accomplished that,” Van Kooten said.It's doubtful a family would live in the house full-time, but it serves as a reminder that bigger is not always better.“For us as college students, this is a lot nicer than a dorm room,” Andrews said.By the way, the tiny house is not for sale and it's missing one important convenience: a bathroom. The students are looking into an old-fashioned outhouse as a temporary fix for that.

PELLA, Iowa —

The average new home size in America just set a record at about 2,600 square feet, but two Pella college students just finished a house 10 times smaller.